3Doodler Plane – The MOTOR

And here is the metal mount covered in 3Doodle. It was a bit tricky getting the ABS to stick to the mount, once I had one of the screws surrounded I could just carry on from the start point and soon had the whole thing securely covered.

Then I Just kept going until I was happy the addition to the mount would allow me to fit the motor to the plane.

Oh! A couple of grub screws let me take the back part off. That would have been a lot easier to start with. At least I found that before trying to solder the cables on.

Time to test the fit. Looks good to me! There will be a lot more 3Doodle to go on around the mount before I’m done but for now I will be taking it on and off a lot as I set the RC gear up.

I had best make sure this motor works before I permanently mount it to the plane. Im rather proud of my soldering skills having not done any for a good ten years! Im amazed I found the soldering iron.. and the solder! The Bresser magnifier third hand coming in very useful again.

I checked out online which parts to connect which wire and it turns out it doesn’t matter with this type of brushless motor. If the motor turns the wrong way I just switch any two, though as luck would have it when I finally test ran this motor it span the right way first time, result!

The battery that came with this motor (very kindly donated to the project) weighs 175g and I had already tried it in the plane. Just feeling the weight of all the kit and the plane I knew I had to strip some serious weight. So to the rescue comes the internet once more as I learn about batteries and find myself a suitable 50g version. This plane only needs to fly for a couple of minutes, in fact if it flies for more than a few seconds I’m calling it a success!. I also have some micro servos on order which should save another 100g or so (if the micro servos have enough torque).

The Plane with all the RC kit roughly in place and balanced on a file. I do need to bring the balance point forward a bit but not much and I can do that with the battery.

Whats next?

Getting closer but still a lot to do. I have to cover the wings, set up all the remaining control surfaces, get the RC gear to draw power from the new battery… wait for the micro servo’s and see if I can use them. Securely mount all the gear, build in access panels to get to the RC gear. A whole host of other stuff to do actually now I try to write it all down, at this rate we are still a couple of weekends away from its first test flight. I am becoming ever more hopeful that this thing might actually make it into the air!

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